I. Field
The present disclosure generally relates to data transmission over a speech channel. More specifically, the disclosure relates to a system and method for supporting higher layer protocol messaging through a speech codec (in-band) in a communication network.
II. Description of Related Art
Transmission of speech has been a mainstay in communications systems since the advent of the fixed line telephone and wireless radio. Advances in communications systems research and design have moved the industry toward digital based systems. One benefit of a digital communication system is the ability to reduce required transmission bandwidth by implementing compression on the data to be transferred. As a result, much research and development has gone into compression techniques, especially in the area of speech coding. A common speech compression apparatus is a “vocoder” and is also interchangeably referred to as a “speech codec” or “speech coder.” The vocoder receives digitized speech samples and produces collections of data bits known as “speech packets”. Several standardized vocoding algorithms exist in support of the different digital communication systems which require speech communication, and in fact speech support is a minimum and essential requirement in most communication systems today. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) is an example standardization organization which specifies the IS-95, CDMA2000 1×RTT (1×Radio Transmission Technology), CDMA2000 EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized), and CDMA2000 EV-DV (Evolution-Data/Voice) communication systems. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is another example standardization organization which specifies the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access), HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access Evolution), and LTE (Long Term Evolution). The VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is an example protocol used in the communication systems defined in 3GPP and 3GPP2, as well as others. Examples of vocoders employed in such communication systems and protocols include ITU-T G.729 (International Telecommunications Union), AMR (Adaptive Multi-rate Speech Codec), and EVRC (Enhanced Variable Rate Codec Speech Service Options 3, 68, 70).
Information sharing is a primary goal of today's communication systems in support of the demand for instant and ubiquitous connectivity. Users of today's communication systems transfer speech, video, text messages, and other data to stay connected. New applications being developed tend to outpace the evolution of the networks and may require upgrades to the communication system modulation schemes and protocols. In some remote geographical areas only speech services may be available due to a lack of infrastructure support for advanced data services in the system. Alternatively, users may choose to only enable speech services on their communications device due to economic reasons. In some countries, public services support is mandated in the communication network, such as Emergency 911 (E911) or eCall. In these emergency application examples, fast data transfer is a priority but not always realistic especially when advanced data services are not available at the user terminal. Previous techniques have provided solutions to transmit data through a speech codec, but these solutions are only able to support low data rate transfers due to the coding inefficiencies incurred when trying to encode a non-speech signal with a vocoder.
Transmitting data through a speech codec is commonly referred to as transmitting data “in-band”, wherein the data is incorporated into one or more speech packets output from the speech codec. Several techniques use audio tones at predetermined frequencies within the speech frequency band to represent the data. Using predetermined frequency tones to transfer data through speech codecs, especially at higher data rates, is unreliable due to the vocoders employed in the systems. The vocoders are designed to model speech signals using a limited number of parameters. The limited parameters are insufficient to effectively model the tone signals. The ability of the vocoders to model the tones is further degraded when attempting to increase the transmission data rate by changing the tones quickly. This affects the detection accuracy and results in the need to add complex schemes to minimize the data errors which in turn further reduces the overall data rate of the communication system. Therefore, a need arises to efficiently and effectively transmit data through a speech codec in a communication network.
An efficient in-band modem is described in detail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/477,544 which is assigned to the assignee hereof and hereby expressly incorporated by reference herein. The in-band modem allows information such as emergency information in an eCall application to be sent from a source to a destination and for the destination to send a low layer acknowledgement at the in-band modem layer indicating proper receipt of the transmitted information.
In some cases, it is advantageous for a layer higher than the low layer (modem layer), such as the application layer, to send an acknowledgement in addition to the low layer acknowledgement. Sending acknowledgements from multiple layers allows for independence among the implemented layers. For example, acknowledgement messaging at a Radio Link Protocol (RLP) layer may exist in addition to acknowledgement messaging at a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer. Sending acknowledgements from multiple layers also improves the reliability of the acknowledgment messaging by acting as a form of redundancy.
Multiple layer acknowledgement messaging increases the bandwidth requirements of typical systems in the art. Typical systems transmit additional identifier bits to distinguish a low layer message from a high layer message. For in-band modem systems, where the available bandwidth is limited by the speech codec, incorporating multiple layer acknowledgement systems presents a costly overhead in the additional bits required for the messages themselves as well as bits allocated to distinguish a low layer message from a high layer message. Compression schemes on the acknowledgement messages have been proposed to reduce the overhead. However, compression schemes do not distinguish different message types at the modem layer and thus still result in an overall increase in bandwidth requirements.
Accordingly it would be advantageous to provide an improved system for supporting higher layer protocol messaging through a speech codec in a communications network.